Leon McGinnis, professor and Eugene C. Gwaltney Chair in Manufacturing Systems in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, was the invited keynote speaker for the PhD Colloquium at the 2010 Winter Simulation Conference. Speaking before 100 recent or soon-to-be PhD's on the topic, “Life After the PhD: What I Wish I had Known Sooner,” McGinnis identified some lessons learned in his 35 years at Georgia Tech that he really would like to have known sooner.

For example, McGinnis said that he wished it hadn't taken him 20 years to realize that the business he really was in was not the business of teaching and learning, but the intellectual capital business, and he wishes he had known earlier how to distinguish the important calls for his time from the urgent ones.

The Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) is the premier international forum for disseminating recent advances in the field of system simulation, and the PhD Colloquium & Poster Session provides PhD students with the opportunity to present their work to the public. In addition to a technical program of unsurpassed scope and quality, WSC provides the central meeting place for simulation practitioners, researchers, and vendors working in all disciplines in industrial, governmental, military, and academic sectors.